The Week in Superlatives: Best Verbal Smackdown, Show Within a Show, and the Most Fun Extortion Story

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Fall is almost here, which means you should go ahead and starting preparing yourself for the pumpkin spice takeover and, of course, more new TV. For now, we're dishing out our weekly prizes for the stand-out moments of the week in TV below.

Most fun extortion story: Netflix's The Family, which details the secret, but ongoing collapse of America's foundational tenet of separation of church and state, contains some shocking truths about the inner workings of the American government. But if you're just too fatigued to wade any more serious political waters of that nature, The Righteous Gemstones offers a much more entertaining take on the business of megachurches. Danny McBride delivers some more of that ridiculous character work that made Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals such delights as his baptism-happy alter ego here is blackmailed for leading a double life as a seedy partier who pretends to be a religious conservative.

The overdue inclusion: Bachelor in Paradise broke its own mold this week in the best way. Demi Burnett from Colton Underwood's season came out as bisexual at the beginning of this season of the ABC reality-off and said she had been casually dating a woman named Kristian, whom she met through fellow Bachelor alum Catherine Agro. Demi's brief romance with Derek made her realize how strong her feelings for Kristian were, and as a result, her girlfriend was brought onto the show to share in their romance on-screen. It was the first moment in Bachelor Nation history that they've allowed a same-sex couple to be on any of the shows — they've had bisexual contestants before but didn't bring in any queer people for them to potentially be with — so it was a very big, and welcome deal. - Tatiana Tenreyro

Best verbal smackdown: Duffy (John Reynolds) finally got the harsh reality check he needed from Gemma (Zoe Boyle) in this week's episode of Four Weeks and a Funeral. Gemma finally, harshly, put an end to his self-pity with the most satisfying dress down speech we've heard in a while. Duffy had been whining his way through the entire season, and Gemma was just the right person to snap him out of it. She's done the show (and the world) a great service. - Megan Vick

Best show within a show: We're digging the meta moment that is happening on BH90210, but The CW's I Ship It is pretty special, too. The series started out as a CW Seed project, featuring a woman named Ella (Helen Highfield) who gets a PA job on the same network's other show Superstition. Considering she used to sling fan-fic for the series, this is the gig of her dreams. The first season did well enough on the streaming service, that it's now part of prime time, and with Ethan Peck leading its The Vampire Diaries-esque subshow, the whole thing is delightfully tongue-in-cheek.

Most sincere connection: The brilliant Netflix documentary American Factoryspent a lot of its time highlighting the differences between Chinese and American factory workers in an Ohio windshield production line, but it was when the two sides found respect and joy from each other's company that the film was really moving. The most impactful moment came when Rob, a furnace supervisor, reminisced about the time he invited 13 Chinese workers — it was just supposed to be a handful, but more workers became interested and he couldn't say no — to his house to nosh on a Thanksgiving feast and shoot some guns. Teary-eyed, Rob said, "They talked about it for a week... that made me happy," in the most sincere and moving way. He later called the Chinese supervisor who was training him a "brother" and said he would do anything for him. American Factory is all about unity, so of course producers Barack and Michelle Obama were involved in it. - Tim Surette